How I Ditched my Fridge & Air Conditioner in Texas, Engaged in Civil Disobedience, all during Ramadan

This article was generously shared by Murtaza Nek.

Hi readers!

I don't know how you discovered this blog. If you're like me, you decided to Google "living without a refrigerator". After some reading, I emailed Andrea. Soon after, I started trying to wean myself off my fridge, and Andrea asked me to write something up about my transition. But my story is about more than unplugging my fridge! So here I go... here I present the month where I became an activist and began to boycotting nonrenewable Texas energy.

I live in South Texas, which was experiencing record-high temperatures last July. I preferred not to use my A/C, but when the temperatures were consistently in the high 90's Fahrenheit (high 30's Celcius), I kept the A/C on all day and kept it off during the night.
Photo: Tim DeChristopher
In late July, I got an email about a heroic environmentalist, Tim DeChristopher, who in 2008 attempted to derail an illegitimate US government bidding for public lands. Not surprisingly, the lands were to be given to oil and gas companies that sought to exploit the land for profit at the expense of the local community and the environment. He posed as a bidder (the famous Bidder 70), and won bids for a lot more land than he could pay for. The email indicated that he was sentenced to two years in jail for financial fraud.

The email really hit me. It was shocking to discover yet another low the Bush administration would sink to by selling off lands to oil and gas companies back in 2008, inspiring that Tim had the guts to do something so bold but risky to oppose it, and intimidating since I realized that if we are to pursue true climate justice, a lot of people are going to need to do difficult things, possibly risk arrest and jail, to really bring attention to the issues at hand... because somehow, the messages delivered by scientists and activists, and now ever more increasingly, by nature itself, aren't enough for the masses.

I was inspired and motivated, but scared! I wasn't ready to do what Tim did, nor was I bold enough to have the courage that Tim had to be able to say, on the day of his sentencing: "The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today."

Contemplating this, I looked around my room, irritated that I live only a passive environmental life and contribute to the profits of unsustainable electric companies by consuming energy with my AC, fridge, and other things. Renewable energy is at 6% in Texas, so one is trapped supporting non-renewable energy here.

From Tim's inspiration, I stopped using my A/C, and lo and behold, it wasn't so bad! I bore temperatures in the high 90's and even low 100's Fahrenheit (high 30's/low 40's Celcius), simply by keeping my doors open to take advantage of the breeze! But the fridge... I didn't know how. That's when I wrote Andrea:

"I wanted to say THANK YOU for your blog! It was so helpful and motivating! I've just recently heard about the prison sentence of Tim DeChristopher, and was reminded of the urgent necessity for uncomfortably difficult action for climate change, but unfortunately felt that I still lack the courage to engage in civil disobedience. Thinking about how I'd like to hopefully go off the grid, I googled "living without a refrigerator" and came across your blog. Reading it was for me one of the first steps towards attempting to go off the grid, thus doing a small part to further my carbon-neutrality."

She encouraged me with her reply:

"Ideally, what we each do may be difficult but should not be overwhelming. Compact fridges or going off completely have been a good way for me to get involved, while getting more involved in activism."

I started making preparations to turn off my fridge. I expected it wouldn't be too hard, because as it happens I live alone, and hardly use my fridge. Furthermore Ramadan was about to start, and my local mosque provides free dinners for the month so I didn't have to worry about cooking. I unplugged in August, and for the first few days I kept the fridge off all day except for 5-7 hours. Every few days, though, I needed to store leftover trays of food from dinners from the mosque, so I needed to keep the fridge on continuously.

In the middle of Ramadan I received a call to engage in civil disobedience in Washington to draw attention to the environmentally disastrous tar sands in Alberta, Canada. The call also urged us to stop a Canadian company called TransCanada from building a 1,700-mile (2,700km) pipeline from the tar sands in Alberta, through Montana, and all the way to Texas, with dangerous consequences all the way down the line. So far, the US Government seems inclined to approve the pipeline.
Photo: Murtaza Nek
The Alberta tar sands region happens to be one of the largest pools of potential greenhouse carbon in the world. With the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere, the expansion of the tar sands means it's over for us as a species, for the climate, essentially for life as we know it. The organizers called for a 15-day protest in front of the White House in Washington, DC, one in which the protestors would be risking arrest. See www.tarsandsaction.org for more details. By the way, for those of you in Canada, there is a similar such one-day action happening in Ottawa tomorrow! For further information, see this link: http://tarsandsaction.org

Long story short, I thank God for bringing me from the point where I was writing Andrea about how I thought something needs to be done, to signing up to participate in the White House protests only a few weeks later, to unplugging my fridge, to protesting and subsequently getting arrested on Monday August 29. I thereafter returned, more resolved to do greater things in pursuit of climate justice.

Back from DC, it turns out that I might be braver than I thought, my fridge is presently off, Ramadan's over, and the rest of life is before me. And as far as fridge-ditching goes, I'm no longer getting free food from my mosque, so now the *real* challenge of going fridge-less begins. Let's see what happens next.

The Worlds Biggest Carbon Bomb: Canadian Tar Sands

And the fuses that threaten to set it off
 

This article was kindly shared by Rex Weyler, author and founding member of Greenpeace. A link to Rex's blog is at the bottom of this article, as well as a link to his Deep Green Column for Greenpeace International.

====================
 
Three long fuses lead back to the world’s biggest carbon bomb: The Canadian Tar Sands. The fuses are pipelines – existing and proposed – that run from the black sludge lakes and devastated landscape of northern Alberta, Canada to marine ports where oil producers hope to ship tar sands crude oil to world energy markets.
Tar Sands Before and After, photo by Peter Essick

Releasing the ancient tar sands carbon into Earth’s atmosphere threatens every man, woman, and child on Earth as well as every other creature. NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands is fully exploited, “it is game-over for Earth’s climate.” The carbon contained in the tar sands is enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into runaway heating, releasing ancient methane and killing sea life and forests, so that humanity could not reverse the heating regardless of what we do.

The fuses to this carbon bomb, the pipelines and tankers, include:
 
1. Keystone XL: An expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline from Canada, through the central US to Port Arthur, Texas, where the crude oil can be refined or loaded onto oil tankers for the global market.
 
2. Enbridge pipeline, a proposed route over the Rocky Mountains, across Canadian boreal forests, wild watersheds, and indigenous territory to the marine port at Kitimat, British Columbia for export. And:

3. Kinder-Morgan TMX Trans-Mountain pipeline, also over the Rocky Mountains, into the port of Vancouver, British Columbia. This pipeline/tanker route is already operating and Kinder Morgan has applied for an expansion. In 2010, 71 large oil tankers shipped tar sands crude oil through the Port of Vancouver and the Georgia Strait to global markets.
 
These three pipelines threaten to detonate the world’s biggest carbon bomb, but they face resistance from indigenous nations, rural communities, farmers, unions, scientists, and private citizens in Canada and the United States.
 
Resistance

This summer, in front of the U.S. White House, police arrested 1,252 citizens – including Athabasca Chipewyan indigenous leader Gitz Deranger, NASA meteorologist Dr. James Hansen, writers Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, actress Daryl Hannah, and Greenpeace USA director Phil Radford – demanding that US President Barak Obama refuse the Keystone pipeline expansion. Nine Nobel Peace Prize winners – including the Dalai Lama, South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Iran’s Shirin Ebadi – signed a letter urging U.S. President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone proposal.

Two major US unions joined the protest. James Little, president of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) issued a statement opposing the pipeline expansion. “We call on the State Department NOT to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline or to take any actions that lead to the further extraction of Tar Sands oil [and] impacts to groundwater resources from pipeline spills [and] the high levels of GHG emissions... The Tar Sands has destroyed vast areas of boreal forest and inflicted havoc on local communities…We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil.”

Athabasca Chipewyan leader Gitz Deranger declared, “I have seen the devastation of our environment and people's health with increased cancer deaths… If Obama approves this pipeline, it would only lead to more of our people needlessly dying.”

“A movement is being born right here in front of the White House,” said Bill McKibben, 350.org founder, who helped organize the protest. “We're at the White House because Keystone is the pipeline Americans have a real hope of stopping, because our president must give his specific approval. Tar sands mining has wrecked native land in Alberta; endangers farms, wild areas, and aquifers along its prospective route; and poses a danger to the whole planet. Keystone XL is one of three pipeline routes that lead back to the world’s biggest carbon bomb, so we’re working in solidarity with the indigenous people and other citizens in Canada.”

Canadian pipelines and tankers 

Last year, in British Columbia, 61 Indigenous nations signed an historic “Fraser River Declaration,” promising to stop a proposed Enbridge pipeline from Alberta to the port at Kitimat, B.C. Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz Nation declared, “Enbridge has spills all over North America… We refuse to be next.”

Enbridge attempted to purchase indigenous consent with a “partnership” deal worth millions of dollars, but in September, the Yinka Dene Alliance – Nadleh Whut’en, Takla Lake, Wet’suwet’en, Saik’uz and Nak’azdli nations – turned down the Enbridge offer, which they called a “desperate and disrespectful attempt to buy our support for this pipeline.” Chief Larry Nooski of the Nadleh Whut’en said, “The Enbridge pipeline would risk an oil spill into our rivers and lands that would destroy our food supply, our livelihoods, and our cultures… There is not any amount of money that compares to the possible damage should an oil spill happen.”

The proposed pipeline would deliver tar sands crude oil to tankers. From Kitimat, these tankers would travel 150 kilometers down narrow Douglas Channel and around coastal islands, through treacherous waters and severe tidal currents, in a region of extreme weather. Thirty-four years ago, in 1977, Greenpeace joined an alliance with fishermen and the Gitga’at indigenous nation at Hartley Bay, B.C. to blockade an oil consortium vessel at the mouth of this channel. Four years later, Greenpeace vessels blockaded an oil tanker entering Georgia Strait.

The oil companies have persisted, but the indigenous nations of western Canada have taken up the challenge, insisting that this pipeline will never be built.

Floating oil

The third main pipeline from the tar sands runs over the Rocky Mountains into the Port of Vancouver, B.C. This Trans-Mountain (TMX) pipeline, owned by US company Kinder Morgan, is already operational.

In 2005, Kinder Morgan bought BC’s Terasen Pipelines, part of a privatization scheme by the BC Liberal government to sell public and natural assets. Kinder Morgan received approval to increase pipeline capacity to 260,000 barrels per day and began turning Vancouver into a tar sands shipping port. In 2007, without any public or indigenous consultation, tar sands crude oil began leaving Vancouver on Panamax and Aframax oil tankers. The US company has applied to dredge Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet to make way for 1-million-barrel Suezmax tankers.

Company founders Richard Kinder and Bill Morgan are ex-Enron billionaires. Enron swindled some $11 billion from their own shareholders. Richard Kinder was chief counsel for Enron from its founding in 1985 until 1996, when he received a $30 million retirement package and left Enron to start his pipeline company. He is now worth over $2.4-billion. The company has left a trail of oil spills and environmental disasters throughout the US.

The Burrard Inlet is home to three indigenous nations: The Musqueam on the Fraser River, the Squamish along Georgia Strait and Howe Sound coastlines, and the Tsleil-Waututh, the “People of the Inlet.” The Musqueam Nation signed the “Fraser River Declaration,” which declares they will help protect their lands, territories, watersheds, and “the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon.”

Rueben George, Sundance Chief and Director of Community Development at Tsleil-Waututh Nation recently told the Vancouver City Council and mayor, who have launched a “green city” project: “We came from these waters… We took care of the Inlet and only took what we needed. How can we be the greenest city when there are oil tankers going through our traditional territory … which we share with every one of you?”

In August, Squamish Elder Robert Nahanee welcomed and blessed a “No Tankers, No Pipelines, No Tar Sands” gathering at the Kinder-Morgan oil port. “We’re going to protect the sacredness of our dear Mother in a good way,” he said, and led a song his ancestors sang when they rescued white settlers from a fire a century ago.

“I’ve been fishing in BC since 1973,” said Canadian fisherman, Ron Fowler, who serves on the Pacific Salmon Commission and as Director of the Area-F Trollers Association on BC’s west coast. “If we get an oil spill anywhere in these waters, it would wipe out every fishery we have, shellfish, salmon, herring, and the plankton that they feed on. There is no sound reason for floating oil and risking our entire coastline.”

Follow the Money

The reason these companies risk oil spills to float oil is simple: Money. Right now, the European price for crude oil is about $24 more per barrel than the North American price. For a million-barrel Suezmax tanker, that price difference is worth $24-million per tanker. For this reason, all tar sands oil is destined for global markets where it will fetch the highest price. Thus, the producers want the pipelines to ports in Texas and British Columbia. It is a deception that this oil will help US or Canadian “domestic energy security.”

Promoters of the Keystone pipeline claim in the US that there is “no global warming impact” to the pipeline because if the US doesn’t approve the Keystone line, they will lose the business to Canadian pipelines. This is another deception. The three pipelines are not mutually exclusive; they are cumulative, and tar sands operators want them all and more. In a Financial Times article, Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert acknowledged the tar sands goal of producing 4-5-million barrels of crude oil per day. To move this oil, the producers need the Canadian pipelines and, according to Liepert, “By 2020, we may need three Keystones.”

Every pipeline or tanker that is stopped represents ancient carbon that stays in the ground and less global heating impact. More pipelines mean more tar sands development, more atmospheric carbon and more heating of Earth’s atmosphere.
 
 ===================
 
List of Groups involved in Stopping the Tar Sands

Tanker Free BC
http://www.tankerfreebc.org/

Wilderness Committee
http://wildernesscommittee.org/tankers

Council of Canadians, Tar Sands Action
http://www.canadians.org/energy/issues/tarsands/

Greenpeace Canada: pipelines and tankers in B.C.
http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/greatbear/Resources/Fact-shee
ts/Oil-development-in-British-Columbias-coastal-waters/

Four Worlds International
http://www.fwii.net/video/video/show?id=2429082%3AVideo%3A66500&xgs=1&xg_so
urce=msg_share_video

Indigenous Environmental Network http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html

Fraser River Declaration http://savethefraser.ca/fraser_declaration.pdf

Rueben George Speaks to Vancouver City Council
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZh3p0mKGws

Squamish elder Robert Nahanee, pipeline/tanker protest
http://www.fwii.net/video/spiritual-leader-robert-nation-no-tankers-in-burr
ard-inlet?commentId=2429082%3AComment%3A70508&xg_source=activity

Fake
http://www.tankerfreebc.org/ "Ethical oil" campaign

Tar Sands Action, US
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/

Tar Sands Action, International
http://stoptarsands.yolasite.com/

Video: Rally Against Oil Tankers and Tar Sands
http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/994-video-rally-against-tar-sands-tankers-in
-vancouver


=======================
Links to writings by Rex Weyler:
Rex Weyler’s Ecolog
www.http://rexweyler.com/blog-placeholder/

Rex's Deep Green Column can be found at Greenpeace International
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/
 

Ozone Decision Spikes Arrest Numbers at White House Pipeline Protest

This article is a press release taken from Tar Sands Action organization, for more details, see the bottom.

244 Arrested on Saturday; 1,252 Arrested over the Last Two-Weeks

WASHINGTON– The largest environmental civil disobedience in decades concluded at the White House this morning with organizers pledging to escalate a nationwide campaign to push President Obama to deny the permit for a new tar sands oil pipeline.

“Given yesterday’s baffling cave on ozone standards, the need for a fighting environmental movement has never been more clear,” said Bill McKibben, who spearheaded the protest. “That movement is being born right here in front of the White House and reverberating around the country.”

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has become the most important environmental decision facing President Obama before the 2012 election and sparked nationwide opposition, from Nebraska ranchers to former Obama campaigners. A petition with 617,428 names opposing the pipeline will be delivered to the White House today.

Over the course of the two-week sit-in 1,252 Americans were arrested, including top climate scientists, landowners from Texas and Nebraska, former Obama for America staffers, First Nations leaders from Canada, and notable individuals including Bill McKibben, former White House official Gus Speth, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, filmmaker Josh Fox, and author Naomi Klein.


“Back home we are fighting to protect our land and water. This week, we decided to bring that fight to the President’s doorstep,” said Jane Kleeb, Director of BOLD Nebraska, who led a delegation of Nebraskans who were arrested this morning. “We are acting on our values and expect our President to act as well.”

Protest organizers are already planning ways to capitalize on the surge of energy the sit-in has created. In a number of cities, people have already begun to visit Obama for America offices to tell the campaign they will volunteer and donate only after President Obama stands up to Big Oil and denies the Keystone XL permit. Along the pipeline route, groups are preparing to drive turnout to State Department hearings later this month. Thousands are expected to descend on Washington, DC for the final hearing on October 7.

Last week, nearly every major environmental group in the country signed on to a letter demanding President Obama deny the pipeline permit. “There is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone XL pipeline, and those of the protesters being arrested daily outside the White House,” wrote the groups in their letter.

Vice President Al Gore also added his support to the protest, writing, “the leaders of the top environmental groups in the country, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, and millions of people around the country—including hundreds of people who have bravely participated in civil disobedience at the White House—all agree on one thing: President Obama should block a planned pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The tar sands are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet.”

Many of the people arrested at the White House wore Obama 2008 buttons as they were taken away in handcuffs.

“We are not going to do President Obama the favor of attacking him,” said McKibben. “We are going to hold the Obama campaign to the standard it set in 2008. Denying this pipeline would send a jolt of electricity through the people that elected this president.”

Executive director of the 1.4 million-member Sierra Club, Michael Brune, warned of the consequences if President Obama approved Keystone XL: “We will see an enthusiasm deficit. We won’t see our members volunteering 20 or 25 or 30 hours a week. We won’t see the same passion and intensity.”

Courtney Hight, a former Youth Vote Director in Florida and White House Council on Environmental Quality staffer, now co-director of the Energy Action Coalition, said,

“Young people mobilized in record numbers in 2008 to elect a leader they believed would fulfill his promise. Yesterday, I was arrested with other young voters to call on President Obama to fulfill his promise and stand up to Big Oil.”

The White House is receiving pressure from citizens north of the border, as well. Activists in Ottawa are planning a civil-disobedience protest on Parliament Hill this September 26.

“The Canadian government is acting as the global advertising agency of the tar sands oil industry,” said author and activist Naomi Klein, who was arrested Friday. “Canadians have come to appeal directly to President Obama, to demand that he stop this pipeline and make good on his 2008 election promises.”

The proposed 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry dirty, tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. A rupture in the pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 20 million people. NASA’s top climate scientist says that fully developing the tar sands in Canada would mean “essentially game over” for the climate.

###

For more information, please visit tarsandsaction.org.

CONTACTS FOR REPORTERS
Daniel Kessler, 510-501-1779, daniel@ran.org
Jamie Henn, 415-601-9337, jamie@tarsandsaction.org

When Scientists, Daryll Hannah, and hundreds of US Citizens turn to Civil Disobedience: To stop a Deadly Pipeline

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